Discover Your Self

Me Manager?

Dear Friends,

I have been struggling to find answers for a quite long about some of the questions arising in my own mind and thought of sharing those with larger audience along with my views about those questions.

At some stage of life, each one of us starts reflecting on him/herself and in the process start churning out lot of thought provoking questions and start seeking answers within or outside.

While all of us are in the rush of climbing up the stairs in both personal and professional world, we become happy as we climb up the ladder and as we start getting materialistic gains along with lot of exciting, challenging and stressful opportunities. Depending upon each person varying attention is paid to all those areas in striking a right balance.

In this context, ability to deal with human beings is not only important but becomes most relevant both on personal and professional front.  In this struggle some people fail miserably while some perform exceedingly well. In one of my recent experiences a young man after his marriage was unable to coupe up with expectations of his family, screwed self-image, consequently lost his job, now in distress and on the verge of getting divorced. Yet another person at an age of 45 years, having about 20 years of professional experience committed suicide unable to manage the growing pressure from profession and family.

 Most of the world famous leaders of present and past have reiterated and written a lot about dealing with human resources and concluded that “Dealing with Human resources as one of the top most quality for Managers /Leaders for a sure and sustained success”.

In my view  as and when, each one of us start dealing with people either at personal or at professional level, and   is able to influence their decisions, he/she by default is deemed to be a Manager / leader. Normally we take and deliver the responsibility of family including Parents, wife, husband, children, brother, sisters etc.  (as the case may be) and in profession we may deal and impact teams directly or indirectly, impact our peers knowingly or unknowingly and also interact with lot of stake holders in the form of internal and external customers impacting intentionally or unintentionally.   This entrusts lot of responsibility individually with each one of us as a Manager or a Leader and many a times, we may be seen as next to GOD as we impact many others lives as well. While this may sound out of context but if we pause for a while and think a little deeper Leadership entrusts lot of responsibility and people look upon to him/ her and expect justice.

To illustrate, many of us thank our parents for their right parenting and proper guidance at right time which made us to come to this level, at the same time some of us are not as happy as we could not get the desired level of parenting / guidance and probably could have done much better. Similarly some of us are very happy to work with some of the exceptionally good managers /bosses and cherish all those moments and always want to work in the same environment while some us may not be able to get such a good boss and may not be able to do well at work leading to demotivation, frustration and inculcating negative thoughts. Thus going by a very powerful and old proverb                      “AS YOU SOW SO SHALL YOU REAP” before we expect justice from GOD, we must deliver justice in our own area of influence.

Thus each one of us as a manager / leader need to take this seriously and ensure that me as a Manager or a leader needs not only learn the subject of  human dealing very well but also understand the intricacies involved in order to  deliver justice. Being Unbiased, transparent and fairness  are three pillars of justice, which go a long way in dealing with Human resources and  all of us need to work on ourselves as how I score on these dimensions.  A serious Introspection?

GOOD LUCK.

Regards, IK PANDIT

Paradise Lost: A Kashmiri Pandit Recounts His Tale of the Exodus

Iqbal Krishen Pandit, a 50-year old Kashmiri Pandit had to leave his homeland 25 years ago. He is currently working with a manufacturing company in Hyderabad. He left Kashmir in 1990 and never looked back. This is his story:

I am a Kashmiri Pandit, 50 years old. There are two faces of my life. The first 25 years, I have spent in Kashmir and the later 25 years out of Kashmir in different parts of India.  I belong to a village called Krangsoo which is just 6 kms from Anantnag connecting the famous Martand Temple via Goutamnag. Since 1986 when in south Kashmir, most of the temples were burnt, Kashmiri society by and large got divided on communal grounds. It became very difficult for Kashmiri Pandits to live there. There was a sharp rise of militancy with bomb blasts, kidnappings and processions on a day to day basis. The government then was completely out of action and could not nab the militants as they enjoyed local support. True Kashmiris who raised voice against it were killed brutally. This included largely Hindus and some Muslims as well. 

I used to work for Union Carbide in Srinagar then. Post Jan 19, 1990, there were brutal killings and kidnappings including some industry veterans daily. On one instance, I was locked up in the factory for about three days as the curfew was imposed throughout Srinagar and its outskirts.  My father, was posted in CID wing of J & K Police had to go for site inspections post bomb blasts and such incidents meant his name would appear on the militants’ hit list and the entire family was very worried and concerned about it. Many of his colleagues had been kidnapped, tortured and brutally killed. For two months, he hid in a room at the back of the house. If any stranger knocked on the door, he would exit from the back door. 

This situation finally made us realise that we had to leave our home. It took us a while to convince my father but in the end, even he agreed. 

On April 22, 1990, when my father and I left our home on an early morning wearing a pheran ( A traditional winter dress) and a towel on the shoulders. We never looked back, and reached Khanabal from where we boarded a bus and reached Jammu in the evening. We took along with us our pregnant Bhabhi and small niece, leaving back our mother, elder brother and his family and other brother there at Kashmir. Once we reached Jammu, we did not know what to do and where to go.

I found one of my friends and a cousin, who offered us to stay with them in a recently allotted tent at a Kashmiri Migrant Camp called ‘Jadhi’ which was about 12 kms from Jammu. From  home in Kashmir where everyone of our family members had their own room, we went to a place where nine of us had to stay in one tent. There was one common toilet for the entire camp and we had to queue for hours to shit in it. Electricity was on and off throughout the night. We had to queue for drinking water as well. Lizards, snakes, scorpions and centipedes were very common and quite a few people died from insect bites as well. Suddenly one would see a truck reaching the tent and people lining up to get some eateries or blankets. To get kerosene, one had to travel about 10 kms to the city and queue up in the scorching heat of Jammu. Many Kashmiri Hindus died of sunstroke as we were never exposed to such a hot summer.  

It was in those conditions that we spent about five years trying to adapt, reconcile and thinking that the world would support us, and  would do everything  to get us back our homeland.

I am still wondering whether this will ever happen. No one returned their awards for us and the media didn’t make a noise either. My father developed cancer and left for hisheavenly abode about 15 years back, but we are still hopeful. Let us hope that one day we go back and proudly live there as a Kashmiri Pandits without any fear, violence and with mutual respect.

 

After moving out of Kashmir, Pandit moved to Ankleshwar and joined Asian Paints. In 2008 he visited Kashmir with his wife and children to show them what Kashmir was all about. Not as a resident, but a tourist in his own homeland. He saw a total change in the landscape of Kashmir. One is the development of infrastructure like new markets, roads, colonies etc have come up but what astonished him most is that both Muslims and Hindus live together in the same colony, village or mohalla.

When asked if he could change one thing about Kashmir, he replied ‘Remove article 370’.

Life a master Piece

Live , Life King size, Me and my Life, we often talk about life and our ambition to grow and involved complexities .

Today I was touched with a saying in the newspaper" Work to live " or" Live to Work" . This is a dilemma which most of the people face while introspecting and the answers are not so simple. There is another view of life and we must get matured to live that life-" Life to Serve"!

In the heat of fierce competition, we loose sight of good and bad , love and hatred, Men and Women, Young and Old, Rich and Poor. But nature provides us an opportunity at every moment of life to serve. Serve does not mean donating money, distributing old clothes etc but is a realisation to identify an opportunity to serve. How many of us hold the hands and help an old woman to cross the road, how many of us wait while we drive a car when an old man signals us to wait to let him cross. But we are all busy in the dilemma of solving " Work to live " or " Live to Work" and ignore these alerts and opportunities. Again in contrary I often observe when all of us sit , discuss, chat and interact with each other in group or one to one, we often look out for an opportunity to talk and blame others- our systems, our society our culture, our office, our race etc. etc. We forget to realise that we are a part of a system, a society, a race, an office, a home etc. HOW CAN WE FIND A OPPORTUNITY TO START & MAKE A SMALL DIFFERENCE FROM MYSELF, INITIATE THE CHANGE, rather than talking, exhibit and walk the talk. The more we ignore these alerts, we feel more important and proud.

Let us resolve to our selves and not get trapped in rat race and look for an opportunity to serve. Small things make big life. This will lead to Life to Serve!